Core Rules

Ruleset and Gamestate

This is the Ruleset for BlogNomic; all Apprentices shall obey it. Section One consists of the "core rules" of BlogNomic, covering basic proposal mechanics; Section Two contains the rules of the current dynasty; and Section Three contains the glossary, which exists solely to clarify the remainder of the ruleset. Rules may be referred to by their type, entire number and name or type and name. (e.g. This Rule may be referred to as Rule 1.1 Ruleset and Gamestate or the Rule entitled “Ruleset and Gamestate").

The Ruleset and Gamestate can only be altered in manners specified by the Ruleset.

Admins may correct obvious spelling and typographical mistakes in the Ruleset at any time, including replacing Spivak pronouns with the singular "they". A typographical mistake is defined as “A mistake in printing, typesetting, or typing, especially one caused by striking an incorrect key on a keyboard.”

Apprentices

Anybody may apply to join BlogNomic (if he is not already playing) by registering at http://blognomic.com via the Register link in the sidebar, and then making a post announcing his arrival. An Admin shall add him to the roster in the sidebar and the GNDT, at which moment he becomes an Apprentice.

A Apprentice may leave the game at any time by posting an entry to the BlogNomic weblog requesting such an action. A Apprentice may only change his name as a result of a proposal approving the change.

Some Apprentices are Admins, responsible for updating the site and the Ruleset, and are signified as such in the sidebar. Apprentices who wish to become Admins may sign up with a username for the Ruleset Wiki, and submit a Proposal to make themselves Admins. Existing Admins may be removed from their posts by Proposal, CfJ, or voluntary resignation. New admins shall be given the GNDT configuration password when they become admins.

Some Apprentices are Idle, and shall be marked as such in the sidebar. For the purposes of the Ruleset, excluding Rules 1.1, 1.2, 1.8 and 1.10, Idle Apprentices are not counted as Apprentices. Admins may render a Apprentice Idle if that Apprentice has asked to become Idle or if that Apprentice has not posted an entry or comment for more than 7 days. In the latter case, the Admin must announce the idling in a blog post. Admins may de-Idle a Apprentice at his request - the Apprentice's personal gamestate retains the values it had immediately prior to his going Idle. If one or more values would be undefined, it is set to the value new Apprentices receive, if such a value exists.

Proposals

Any Apprentice may submit a Proposal to change the Ruleset or Gamestate, by posting an entry in the "Proposal" category that describes those changes (unless the Apprentice already has 2 Proposals pending, or has already made 3 Proposals that day).

Proposals can either be Pending, Enacted, or Failed. When a Proposal is first put forward, it is considered Pending. A Proposal may not also be a Call for Judgment.

Voting

Any Apprentice may cast his Vote on a Pending Proposal by making a comment on that entry using a voting icon of FOR, AGAINST or DEFERENTIAL.

If the Apprentice who made a Proposal has not cast a Vote on it, his Vote is counted as FOR. If a Apprentice uses more than one Voting Icon in comments on a Pending Proposal, his Vote is the last voting icon he uses. If a Apprentice leaves the game or goes Idle, his Vote is no longer valid. If a Apprentice votes against his own proposal, that vote may not be changed. This is referred to as a Self-Kill.

A vote of DEFERENTIAL is a vote of no opinion, or of faith in the decision of the Artisan. The vote will count as the same as the Artisan's vote. If the Artisan casts a vote of DEFERENTIAL on a proposal, it serves the purpose of cancelling any previous vote on that proposal that was cast by the Artisan. If there is no Artisan, a vote of DEFERENTIAL counts as an explicit vote of abstention.

If no Artisan has voted on a proposal, a vote of DEFERENTIAL on that proposal does not count as a vote for the purposes of rule 1.5.

Enactment

The oldest pending Proposal may be enacted by any Admin (and the Ruleset and/or Gamestate updated to include the specified effects of that Proposal) if either of the following is true:-

It has a number of FOR votes that exceed or equal Quorum, has been open for voting for at least 12 hours, and has not been vetoed or self-killed.
It has been open for voting for at least 48 hours, it has more than 1 valid vote, more than half of its votes are FOR, and it has not been vetoed or self-killed.

The oldest pending Proposal may be failed by any Admin, if any of the following are true:-

It has enough AGAINST votes that it could not be Enacted without one of those votes being changed.
It has been open for voting for at least 48 hours and half or fewer of its votes are FOR.
It has been open for voting for at least 48 hours and has fewer than 2 valid votes.
The Apprentice who proposed it has voted AGAINST it.
The Artisan has voted to VETO it

Whenever an Admin marks a proposal, CfJ, or DoV as passed or failed, he must also mark his name, and report the final tally of votes (or the fact that it was self-killed or vetoed).

Proposals the Artisan has voted to VETO are considered vetoed. Proposals the author has voted against are considered self-killed unless the Artisan has voted VETO on them, or they have fulfilled one of the other requirements to fail a proposal before the author’s self-kill vote is placed.

Calls for Judgment

If two or more Apprentices actively disagree as to the interpretation of the Ruleset, or if a Apprentice feels that an aspect of the game needs urgent attention, then any Apprentice may raise a Call for Judgment (abbreviated CfJ) by posting an entry in the “Call for Judgment” category. The post shall go on to describe the issue, and measures that shall be taken to resolve it.

All Apprentices may add votes of agreement or disagreement in comments to this entry, using appropriate voting icons (a Apprentice's later votes overriding their earlier ones). Unfailed CfJs continue until they reach a Quorum of FOR votes, a Quorum of AGAINST votes, or if there is no hiatus going on, until four days have passed, and if there is a hiatus going on until two days have passed. After this time, if more than half of the cast votes are in favour, the Gamestate and Ruleset shall be amended as was specified. Otherwise, the CfJ fails. A Failed CfJ has no further effect.

Any CfJ that has no effect on the ruleset or gamestate may be automatically failed by any admin.

Gamestate Tracking

Proposals, Calls for Judgment, and other official posts, as well as specific gamestate information, shall be tracked by the BlogNomic blog at http://blognomic.com. Any Apprentice may post to the blog at any time, but may only make official posts to the blog when the Ruleset allows it. Posts following the format specified by a rule are considered official posts.

If no Apprentice has commented on it, an official post may be altered or removed by its author; otherwise this can only be done as allowed by the Ruleset. The Admin processing an official post is allowed to append to the post to reflect its new status. Anything appended to a post in this way must be placed in the Admin field of the post, and the post's Status must changed to reflect its status.

A non-official post may not, through editing of the blog or otherwise, be changed into an official post, with the following exception: Whilst a non-official post has been posted for less than five minutes and has no comments, the author may change the categories as they wish.

Voting and comments are accessible through the link at the bottom of every post.

Specific parts of the Gamestate data shall be tracked by the Generic Nomic Data Tracker at http://blognomic.com/gndt/generic.cgi?nomic=blog. Any Apprentice may update any Apprentice's data via the GNDT, whenever the Ruleset permits it.

All updates to the GNDT are logged - if a Apprentice feels that an alteration goes against the Rules (as they were at the time of the alteration), he may simply undo the effects of that alteration. If such an undoing is disputed, a Call for Judgment shall be raised.

Apprentices shall be assigned a password for the GNDT when they join the Nomic.

Dynasties

BlogNomic is divided into a number of Dynasties. Each Dynasty is headed by a single Apprentice, known as the Artisan, and is named according to the number of Dynasties he has headed (eg. "The First Dynasty of Myke").

The Artisan may vote to VETO any Proposal.

Victory and Ascension

If a Apprentice (other than the Artisan) believes that he has achieved victory in the current Dynasty, he may make a post to the Blognomic weblog in the Declaration of Victory category, detailing this.

Upon doing so, the game immediately goes into Hiatus, if it hasn’t already. During this time, the only game actions that may be taken are those covered by Rules “Apprentices”, “Voting”, “Calls for Judgment”, “Gamestate Tracking” and “Victory and Ascension”.

Every Apprentice may respond to an active DoV saying whether or not he believes the poster has achieved victory in the current Dynasty (using the FOR and AGAINST icons).

The Declaration of Victory may be resolved after 24 hours, or after 12 hours if the Artisan has voted on it. Upon resolution, if a Quorum of Apprentices have voted on the DoV and more than half of those votes were in favour, then the DoV passes - otherwise the DoV fails, and if no other DoVs are still pending, the Hiatus ends.

When a DoV passes, all other active DoVs are failed, and a new Dynasty begins with the Apprentice who made the DoV as its Artisan. (That Apprentice may pass this role to another Apprentice at this point, if he wishes.) The Hiatus continues until the new Artisan posts an Ascension Address to the BlogNomic weblog - this shall specify the Artisan's chosen theme for the new Dynasty, and may optionally include a proclamation that any number of Dynastic Rules will be repealed, and that any keywords will be replaced with new theme-appropriate terms.

A DoV may not be started in the period between a passing DoV and that DoV’s Ascension Address. When a DoV is failed, if it has a number of AGAINST votes that exceed Quorum, the Apprentice who posted it cannot make another DoV until after 120 hours (5 days) have passed since the time their DoV was failed.

A Declaration of Victory may not also be any other type of Official Post unless the rules concerning that type of Official Post explicitly state otherwise.

Fair Play

The following are BlogNomic’s rules of fair play. If any of the rules are found to have been broken, a proposal or CfJ may be made to remove the perpetrator from the game, and bar them from rejoining.

A single person should not control more than one Apprentice within BlogNomic.
An Apprentice should not “spam” the BlogNomic blog. What counts as spamming is subjective, but would typically include posting more than ten blog entries in a day, more than ten blog comments in a row, or posting a blog entry of more than 1000 words.
An Apprentice should not deliberately exploit bugs or unexpected behaviours in the software running the game (ExpressionEngine, MediaWiki or the GNDT).
Instead of deleting content from a blog post which has at least one comment, the content should either be struck through with <strike> tags, or replaced with a link to a copy of the same content on the wiki.
An Apprentice should not edit their own blog comments once posted, nor those of any other Apprentice.
An Apprentice should not edit the "Entry Date" field of a blog post.
An Apprentice should not make or edit a post such that its title does not broadly match its URL title.
An Apprentice should not make a DoV primarily to delay the game by putting it into Hiatus.

Dynastic Rules

King Anthony's Crown

Arthexis may not veto proposals. This takes precedence over all other rules.

Runes

There exist objects called Runes, each represented by a single letter that is the Rune’s Value. A sequence of Runes has a Value that is the sequence of letters corresponding to the Values of its component Runes. A Rune or sequence of Rune may be referred to by its Value.

A Rune Chain is a sequence of consecutive Runes.

Runes are subdivided into Consonants, Vowels and non-Vowel non-Consonant Damaged Runes: The legal Values for Consonants are ‘P’, ‘R’, ‘S’ and ‘T’. The legal Values for Vowels are ‘A’, ‘O’ and 'U'. The only legal Value for Damaged Runes is ‘X’.

“No Rune can have a value other than ‘P’, ‘R’, ‘S’, ‘T’, ‘A’, ‘O’, ‘X’ or ‘U’.”

Workbench

Each Apprentice has a single sequence of Runes tracked in the GNDT under the column “Workbench”. An Apprentice’s Workbench is initially a sequence of “X” runes that has the same length as the third-longest Workbench among other Apprentices

As a Timed action, an Apprentice may Manipulate their Workbench. Manipulating a Workbench is defined as taking one action from the following list:

Add any stable, non-damaged Rune to the start of the Workbench and then remove the last Rune of the Workbench
Swap the first and last Runes of the Workbench
Engage in Transmutation, to the extent permitted under the rule “Unstable Runes”.
Add an X to the start of the Workbench, only if there exist three longer Workbenches.

Unstable Runes

The Vowel ‘U’ is a special magical element, not found in nature and only obtainable through the artificial process of transmutation. If any Apprentice has the consecutive subsequence “AAOO” or “AOOA” in his Workbench, then as a Daily action (and so long as that Apprentice does not take any other daily action during that Day that involves making changes to his own Workbench), that Apprentice may substitute “UUUU” for the “AAOO” or “AOOA” consecutive subsequence in his workbench. Notwithstanding anything to the contrary in the ruleset (but subject to the Doppelganger spell), an Apprentice may only voluntarily obtain instances of the Vowel ‘U’ to his workbench by operation of the previous sentence. This action is known as Transmutation.

The vowel ‘U’ has a short half-life. If an Apprentice (the “U-bearer”) has one or more ‘U’ runes in his Workbench then any Apprentice may change the rightmost ‘U’ in the U-bearer’s Workbench to ‘X’ (this process is called “U-Decay”), so long as the Apprentice making that change makes a comment to the GNDT expressly indicating that he has done so, whereupon a minimum of three (3) Days must elapse before the U-bearer’s Workbench may again be subjected to U-Decay.

Spellcasting

There are a number of Spells, listed in this Rule and its subrules. Each Spell has one or more Activation Sequences, each of which is a Rune sequence containing one or more Vowels and no Damaged Runes. Each Spell also has an Effect.

Any Apprentice whose Workbench contains a Rune Chain that has the same Value as a Spell’s Activation Sequence may Cast that Spell, provided he has Eaten some food that day. Upon doing so, he must select one such Rune Chain, change the last Rune in that Rune Chain to a Damaged Rune, then perform the Spell’s Effect.

No two Spells may have the same Activation Sequence. A spell cannot be Cast if its Effect could not be performed.

Basic Spells

The following spells exist, as per this Rule's superrule.

Rune Swap has "OPT" as its activation sequence. Its Effect is "Exchange the positions of two Runes in your Workbench".

Cleanse has "SOAP" as its activation sequence. Its Effect is "Choose an Apprentice. Move all Damaged Runes in that Apprentice's Workbench to the end of their Workbench, leaving the relative order of the other Runes unchanged.

Reverse Manipulation has "POP" and "POPS" as its activation sequences. Its Effect is "Remove the first Rune from your Workbench, then add any Consonant to the end of your Workbench."

The Spell “Panic” has “SOS” as its Activation Sequence. Its Effect is “Your Ward becomes Suppressive unless it is already Hardened.”

The Spell “Booby Trap” has “TRAP” as its Activation Sequence. Its Effect is “Your ward becomes Trapped.”

The spell Fireball has "TOAST" as its Activation Sequence. Its Effect is "Make a comment in the GNDT of the form 'NAME DICEX' where NAME is the name of an Apprentice and X is the number of Runes on that Apprentice's Workbench. Change the Rune on that Apprentice's Workbench with a position equal to the result of the DICE roll to 'X'"

The spell Expand Workbench has "STOAR" and "STOU" as its Activation Sequences. Its Effect is "Replace the O in the Rune Chain used to cast this spell with OO".

The spell Ranged Manipulate has "PORT" as its Activation Sequence. Its Effect is "Manipulate the Workbench of another Apprentice".

The spell Melting Pot has “SOUP” as its Activation Sequence. Its Effect is “Choose two Apprentices. They Become Partners.”

The spell "Doppelganger" has "POTATO" as its Activation Seqauence. Its effect is as follows: Does nothing if the casting Apprentice's Partner has a Ward that is not Null. Choose another Apprentice (other than the casting Apprentice's Partner) (the "Source Apprentice"). This spell causes the entire Workbench of the casting Apprentice's Partner to be replaced with a copy of the Source Apprentice's Workbench (including any "U" runes, notwithstanding any prohibition in the rule entitled "Unstable Runes").

The spell Appetizers has “TAPAS” as its Activation Sequence. This spell has no effect unless at least one Apprentice has more items on their table than the caster. Its Effect is “Chose one table, add DICEX items to that table.” X = the largest value in the Table column of the GNDT at the time this spell is cast.

The spell Kingmaker has “PROUST” as its activation sequence. Its effect is “The partner of this Apprentice, at the time this spell is cast, may achieve victory at any time from now until the end of the dynasty, unless they are ineligible for some reason to achieve victory.”

The spell “Throw it all in” has “POT” as its activation sequence. Its effect is “Set your Workbench to any string of four stable nondamaged runes”.

Pacing

Each Apprentice has a numerical "Time" statistic tracked in the GNDT. New Apprentices have 0 Time. As a weekly action, each Apprentice may set their Time to 7.

If a game action is a Timed Action, each Apprentice may spend one Time in order to take that action. Each Apprentice may perform no more than two Timed Actions in any 24-hour period.

Wards

Each Apprentice may have a single enchantment affecting their bench, tracked in the GNDT under the “Ward” column. The legal values for a Ward are:

Null Suppressive Hardened Trapped

An Apprentice’s Ward defaults to Null.

An Apprentice with a Suppressive Ward cannot Cast or be affected by any Spells. Whenever their Workbench is Manipulated, their Ward becomes Null.

An Apprentice with a Hardened Ward cannot Cast or be affected by any Spells. Whenever their Workbench is Manipulated, their Ward becomes Suppressive.

If an Apprentice with a Trapped Ward has their Workbench changed by another Apprentice, their Ward becomes Null and that other Apprentice has the first Rune in their Workbench changed to ‘X’.

The Buddy System

Each Apprentice, with the possible exception of the Artisan, shares a table with one other Apprentice. This is tracked in the Partner column of the GNDT.

If at any time a non-Artisan Apprentice would not have another Apprentice as their Partner, that Apprentice’s Partner becomes the Artisan (if the Artisan doesn’t have a Partner) or the Artisan’s Partner (if the Artisan does have a Partner). In the latter case, the Artisan ceases to have a Partner. Either way, that Apprentice’s new Partner’s Partner becomes that Apprentice.

Whenever a Rule causes two different Apprentices to “Become Partners”, each of those two Apprentice’s Partner statistics is set to the other. Then those Apprentice’s former Partners’ Partner statistics are set to each other.

Tables and Food

As referenced in Rule 2.8 The Buddy System, each set of Partners shares a table. This is represented by the Table column of the GNDT. The table column records the number of Food Items on a given Apprentice’s table. A table initially has a number of items equal to the length of the longer Workbench of any Apprentices sharing the table.

Food may be Eaten or Served, resulting in the reduction or addition of food items on a table.

As a daily action, but not more than once in 8 hours, an Apprentice may Eat one item of food from their own table, provided that this would not result in an empty table.

As a daily action, but not more than once in 8 hours, an Apprentice may Serve one item of food to any table.

Should any situation result in two Partners having an unequal table, such as from a Partner swap, the value shall default to the larger table status.

Should any situation result in an Apprentice not having a valid table, re-initialize the table.

Glossary

Keywords

A keyword defined by a rule supersedes the normal English usage of the word. A keyword defined in this glossary supersedes that defined by a rule. (eg. A rule specifying "bananas are blue" cannot be overruled by posting a dictionary definition or a photo of a banana, and a rule specifying "every day is Sunday" will be overruled by the glossary entry below.)

Can: "is able to"

Comment: A blog comment published to the BlogNomic weblog at blognomic.com

Daily Action: If a game action is a Daily Action, each Apprentice able to perform it may take that action once per day, but not more than once every six hours.

Day: References to a "day" (as an entity rather than a duration, eg. "Sunday") refer to that day in the timezone of the BlogNomic blog, which is considered to be GMT for all purposes.

Dice: References to "YDICEX" refer to Y X-sided dice, rolled within the GNDT. To roll dice, post DICEX in the comments field of the GNDT, replacing X with the number of sides on the die you wish to roll.

Effective Vote Comment (EVC): An Apprentice's Effective Vote Comment with respect to a given Proposal means that Apprentice’s Comment to that Proposal (if any) that contains that Apprentice’s Vote on the Proposal that is given effect in accordance with Rule 1.4 when the Proposal is Adminned.

Flavour Text: When posting a blog entry, an Apprentice may use the “Commentary or flavour text” field of the blog publishing form to add their own comments or description of their post. For the purposes of all other rules, such text is not considered to be part of the post.

Gamestate: Any information which the Ruleset regulates the alteration of.

May: "is permitted to"

Post: A blog post published to the BlogNomic weblog at blognomic.com

Quorum: Quorum is equal to half the number of Apprentices, rounded down, plus one. If a Rule or other Gamestate document refers to a Quorum of some subset of Apprentices (such as a Quorum of Apprentices who share a particular Gamestate attribute, but excluding all other Apprentices) then Quorum is equal to half the number of Apprentices who share that Gamestate attribute, rounded down, plus one. If the words quorum and Quorum are ever different, they effectively mean the same thing.

Shall: "is required to"

Should: "is recommended that"

Story Post: A Story Post is an Official Post that is not a member of any specific category of Official Posts mentioned or defined in a Core Rule (excluding Official Post).

Subject: The "subject" of a blog entry is the part of the Title of an entry which is after the first colon. If the Title does not contain a colon, then the whole Title is the subject. Any entry whose subject is "" (i.e. an empty string) is not valid.

Voting Icons: For use in voting, a check box http://blognomic.com/images/vote/for.gif shall represent a vote FOR, an X http://blognomic.com/images/vote/against.gif shall represent a vote AGAINST, an IMP http://blognomic.com/images/vote/imperial.gif shall represent a vote of DEFERENTIAL, and an Imperial Seal (currently http://blognomic.com/images/vote/seal.gif) shall represent the Imperial Veto.

Week: References to a "week" refer to the period of time between the start of a Monday and the end of the following Sunday.

Weekly Action: If a game action is a Weekly Action, each Apprentice able to perform it may take that action once per week, but not more than once every twenty-four hours.

Clarifications

Numbers and Variables

Unless otherwise specified, game variables defined to hold numeric values can hold only non-negative integers, and any action that would set those values below zero instead sets them to zero. Any situation which would require a roll of DiceX when X is zero or lower always yields a value of 0 unless stated otherwise.
All numbers, unless stated otherwise by a rule, are in base ten.
Unless otherwise specified: When “X” is a number, to spend X of a numeric value “V” means to subtract X from V (i.e. replace V with V-X).
No action may be taken which would require setting a gamestate variable to an illegal value. (e.g. spending X of a numeric value that must be non-negative when the subtraction would result in a number which is negative).

Rules and Proposals

If a new rule is created by a proposal and its location is not noted in that proposal, that new rule is to be placed in the Dynastic Rules.
Where a Proposal would amend the effects of Proposal Enactment, this does not apply to its own enactment unless explicitly stated (eg. a proposal proposing that enacted proposals earn their author a banana when enacted would not earn a banana for its own author, when enacted).
Rules which trigger upon the Enactment or Failure of a Proposal are the responsibility of the Admin who Enacts or Fails it.

Time

For the purpose of all rules, time in Blognomic is in GMT.
All references to time must be either specific or defined within the ruleset to be considered achievable in the gamestate. Abstract concepts of time (e.g. "dinnertime", "twilight") cannot be achieved until they fulfil one of these criteria.
Where the month, day and/or year of a calendar date are ambiguous (eg. "04/10/09", it shall be assumed that the date is in a day/month/year format.
Any duration reference to a given day (i.e. “Sunday” or “August 2nd"), unless otherwise stated, inclusively begins at 0:00:00 GMT on the mentioned day and inclusively ends at 23:59:59 GMT on the same day.

Spelling

Superficial differences between the spelling of geographic versions of English, e.g, British English, American English and Australian English shall be construed as irrelevant for the purposes of play.

Ruleset 70

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